


white on white

by postcardsfromrussia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Love, Multi, Scars, Self Harm, Sex, Vignette, self injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 08:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2303999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardsfromrussia/pseuds/postcardsfromrussia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three vignettes about scars, love, and sex.</p>
<p>Lyrics taken from the live version of Round Here by Counting Crows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	white on white

_She said I’m sick and tired of life  
Well everybody’s sick and tired of something_

1\. Daphne was drunk. It was one of those drunk times that she managed to act completely sober and be completely the opposite. Daphne wasn’t trying to pretend, but she felt completely normal. Intoxication wasn’t straightforward, after all.

“Pansy,” the girl had said, “Pansy Parkinson. You might remember me from Hogwarts.” (Daphne did, and she had wanted nothing more to kiss those soft lips that looked like they belonged on a plate served up with whipped cream and cherries and what on earth was she doing, looking at her mouth like she wanted a taste?)

Pansy danced languidly. She’d lost a fair amount of weight since Hogwarts - Daphne thought that she’d looked better before; now she looked fragile, like any touch would break her. There were ladders of scars up her thighs and across her arms, and Daphne was too afraid to ask about them. She was too afraid to ask most things, about Pansy.

Pansy fucked languidly, too, like she was doing it with ease and Daphne was working hard towards an end that Pansy had already met. It was hard because life seemed so unendingly difficult for Pansy, yet she covered that up with everything she had: a calm fuck, a dance, a straightforward introduction. Ignoring the fact that her limbs are coated with silver scars.

Later, in bed, Daphne and Pansy. Daphne traced her skin, following the roads of scars, kissing each one. She wanted to stop - it seemed perverse - but she couldn’t, not with Pansy, around her and under her, making sounds that drove her crazy.

“Don’t romanticize,” Adrian had told her, but Daphne had always been a hopeless romantic, and Pansy was the perfect tragedy. She didn’t say anything - and even later, they would not talk about it. But they both knew how those scars had come to be, and they were not to be kissed, not to be worshipped. But Daphne, always the rebel, did whatever came to mind.

“I’m tired of life,” Pansy said, the closest thing to an explanation Daphne ever got, and it made Daphne irrevocably angry. How dare someone be tired of life for no reason when Daphne herself had spent years in hell and come back breathing? When countless people she knew and loved had died in a war, this girl was tired? Everyone was tired. Not everyone did something about it.

She wasn’t sure if this made Pansy braver or weaker than her.

__

Would you hold me if I was lonely without you?  
I’m under the gun round here

2\. Lavender did not speak to Parvati about the kiss. She did not speak about how Parvati had traced the scars on her back, how Parvati had closed her eyes and wished she was somewhere else instead of having to watch Lavender in this much pain.

(Lavender remembered the exact sting of Greyback’s wounds, the exact look on Parvati’s face when she had seen Lavender in the hospital. There is not much that she forgets, after all this.)

Lavender had fought and fought hard and she had always thought of herself as invincible. After all, for a time, she was invincible. She had been lucky enough to continue going to Hogwarts, although it was hell. Nothing too horrible had ever happened to her save the loss of people she cared about, but Parvati had always been there and that was what Lavender deemed really important. Maybe that was the whole problem: with Parvati there, Lavender was unable to see the subpar things in her life. Until the pain of Greyback brought her back to reality in full force.

“Are you a werewolf now?” was the first thing Parvati had asked, beyond the usual are-you-all-right and how-are-you-doing questions. That was always Parvati, direct and to the point, sometimes to a fault.

Lavender loved her anyway.

“I don’t know,” said Lavender, which was the truth. She honestly didn’t remember whether Greyback had bitten her or just attacked her- and which was worse, in any case? She did know that she had a newfound penchant for raw meat (which she would never admit to anyone save Parvati and her parents) and that she seemed to have grown hair in places that she hadn’t had it before, but she didn’t think that she was a full-on werewolf, at least not in the way that Parvati was thinking.

“You’re not,” said Parvati, with certainty, although her voice was shaking. “That’d be ridiculous. You’re Lavender.”

Werewolf and Lavender Brown seemed a contradiction of themselves, just as the idea of romance and platonism together seemed oxymoronic in a sense, yet here they were, Lavender and Parvati. One in love with the other.

Parvati is drunk when the kiss happens and Lavender regrets it because of that for a long time, but she has a hard time with regret because it’s Parvati and soft lips on soft lips. The first touch of Parvati’s lips against Lavender’s was like a spring rain in the middle of the desert. Soft and honey-sweet, hesitant and unsure. She could taste Parvati’s awkward inexperience with women in her fumbled movements but it did not bother Lavender in the slightest and she rubbed her lips against Parvati, a back and forth movement to soothe and excite. Parvati’s breathing was loud, but Lavender could still hear the frantic beating of her own heart over it.

She did not want to open her eyes in the chance that she was dreaming this, but when she felt Parvati’s hands move under her shirt and up her back to feel the still-raised scars she knew it could not possibly be fake. Lavender liked to imagine that Parvati was making sure that it was still Lavender under her touch, still her best friend, that anyone else wouldn’t have been the same.

Lavender likes to imagine a lot of things, lately.

She does not know if Parvati remembers the kiss. She does not want to ask.

__

We talk just like lions  
But we sacrifice just like lambs  
(and she’s slipping through my hands)

3\. Harry’s scar has not hurt in nineteen years. All was well.

Except Ginny does not like to talk about his scar and lately Lily Luna won’t stop asking where it comes from and Harry hasn’t shared that part of the past with his youngest child, not yet at least. And sometimes he’ll have phantom pain from his scar in the middle of the night and he’ll wake up, drenched in sweat, terrified that Voldemort is coming back and this time he’ll have to protect his wife and his children and maybe it’ll be his parents all over again. Only he wakes up and it never is. He’s always safe.

Never has Harry been comfortable in his safety.

Over time, the scar even begins to fade, no longer throbbing red like it was in its prime time of 1998. Lily Luna still won’t stop asking, though, and James is threatening to tell her before Harry is ready to. It took a long time to tell James, too, and when he did, James had tried to shrug it off but had been terrified, Harry could tell, for days.

They know Harry is famous, and they know it has to do with his scar (everything seems to, Lily Luna says), but they don’t know why.

At the end, what does it matter?  



End file.
